Energized by a steamy kiss and a cantankerous Stefan on the loose, "The Vampire Diaries" continues to create quite a stir as it approaches its Season 3 finale in May.

Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and Elena's (Nina Dobrev) kiss during the Jan. 5 episode "The New Deal" ignited a Twitter firestorm as it quickly became a No. 1 worldwide trending topic.

“There was this amazing, immediate response,” Somerhalder recently told Entertainment Weekly. “It was a lot of fun to see people getting excited thinking: ‘I won. That’s what I wanted.’ ”

Based on the best-selling series of books by L. J. Smith, the series chronicles two vampire brothers obsessed with the same beautiful girl and battling to control the fate of an entire town.

Executive producers Kevin Williamson ("Scream") and Julie Plec ("Kyle XY," "Wasteland") saw the potential for such audience enthusiasm early in the show's run.

“We saw it as a really cool love story that could be epic and romantic and dangerous and all those wonderful things,” Williamson explained. “But only when we cast and put it together and saw the response did we truly know we were onto something.”

Elena's choice to share a kiss with Damon was another hard blow for Stefan (Paul Wesley), who recently embraced his dark side to counter threats by vampire supervillain Klaus, played by Joseph Morgan ("Master and Commander"). However, in the process, Stefan has alienated Elena, who can't quite come to grips with his erratic behavior.

“We start to see he’s trying to put himself squarely back on the straight line, but everything that he’s done and everything that he’s not letting himself feel is actually destroying him from the inside out,” Plec said. “He’s got to come out the other side of that before he can even step forward as a viable option for Elena.

“They’ve got some tension that they’ve got to work through as we get deeper into the season. Elena is ultimately in the position of asking herself, ‘How do I feel about each of these brothers, and who do I want to be with?’”

Bryant L. Griffin is managing editor for Airlock Alpha, 1701News and Rabid Doll, and a writer for the entire GenreNexus network. He works at a major-metro newspaper and served as a journalist in the U.S. Army. In 2002, he joined Nexus Media Group Inc., contributing to many early design concepts before shifting his focus back to writing. Bryant hails from Tampa, Fla.